The Collector | Art in the time of coronavirus captures our dystopian reality, highlights potential of the digital world
- Independent artists are tapping the internet’s limitless potential for post-pandemic posterity
- Non-commercial social media accounts allow for a rotating display of works and voices, rather than a single authority
Art historians looking back on 2020 will undoubtedly identify works of art that speak of the horror brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic. But really, no art can fully capture the dystopian reality as it has unfolded because each one of us is being affected differently, depending on the fate of our loved ones, where we live, our economic circumstances, our gender, our age and so on.
Still, I do like the way grass-roots, independent platforms working outside institutions are making use of the internet’s decentralised, anarchic potential to capture our fractured, fast-changing and unpredictable reality through art.
Of course, we can curate our own exposure to creative content online, but the artists we choose to “follow” is limited. I want to take in the kaleidoscopic view, while the chamber is being rotated, before the fragments settle.
There are non-commercial Instagram, WeChat and other social media accounts that do not involve a single authority dictating what and who we should be seeing. Instead, they provide the barest structure to content updated by makers as they react to changes on a daily basis.